New York City has for too long been short changed our fair allocation of state dollars toward education. For years students upstate have received more funding per-capita than NYC Public School students. This must stop. Furthermore, as more and more private developers build larger and larger luxury housing these developers must be made to provide needed infrastructure improvements like more schools to help ease the massive overcrowding that is happening all over our borough. As the child of a Public School reading teacher and a former P.S. 230 student I know how important our Public Schools are to our City and State.

We need to:

Bring art and music back to all of our public schools;

Invest in technology so that all of our schools have access to laptops, smartboards, and high speed internet;

Invest in more teachers and new schools so we can reduce overcrowding and class size;

Ensure that our teachers have the resources and training to reach all of their students and not just have to teach to a standardized test that often is not representative of a child's actual abilities;

Stop excessive testing where 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, and 8th graders have to take 6 days of testing a year that is not representative of their abilities.

Ensure that New York State is fully funding our New York City Public Schools and fighting to enforce the Campaign for Fiscal Equity.

Stop Co-Location and the corporate pressures to privatize our Public School system.

Hire reading teachers for all elementary schools so all students have a strong foundation in reading and writing before going to middle school;

Hire science and technology teachers for all elementary schools so all our students have access to the fields and tools that will shape the 21st century.

As a graduate of SUNY Binghamton the State must invest more in our State and City University system so the young people of New York can get a first rate education without having to go into massive debt.